"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson

Monday, December 03, 2007

Sean Taylor, ghoulish statistics, and the Black KKK

One of this week's big news stories was the murder of Washington Redskins football player Sean Taylor, who was shot in his own home in front of his wife and daughter.

Even before any suspect had been caught, at least one columnist - using what he called "aggressive speculation" - guessed that the perpetrator(s) would be black. For the record, Sean Taylor was black, and the columnist, Jason Whitlock, is black as well. In an opinion piece entitled Taylor's death a grim reminder for us all, Whitlock describes a deadly, albeit, unofficial force in this country called the Black KKK. According to Whitlock, the Black KKK has claimed another victim in Sean Taylor. No, there is no organized terror group called the Black KKK, but as Whitlock writes,

There's a reason I call them the Black KKK. The pain, the fear and the destruction are all the same...

Well, when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there's every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That's not some negative, unfair stereotype. It's a reality we've been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.

When the traditional, white KKK lynched, terrorized and intimidated black folks at a slower rate than its modern-day dark-skinned replacement, at least we had the good sense to be outraged and in no mood to contemplate rationalizations or be fooled by distractions.

Our new millennium strategy is to pray the Black KKK goes away or ignores us. How's that working?

Jason Whitlock touches upon an ugly truth. According to the Tuskegee Institute, the total number of lynchings of blacks in the United States between the years 1882 and 1951 - when post-Reconstruction racism in this country was at its most virulent - was 3,437 (1,293 whites were also lynched during that same time period). While this is certainly a tragic number of black lynching victims, let's put some perspective on it. While 3,437 blacks were lynched over that 70-year period, in 2006 alone, 7,421 blacks were murdered in the United States. Of that 7,421, about 92% were murdered by other blacks - again, in 2006 alone! Sean Taylor is yet another number in a statistic that far too many people have accepted as a normal part of 21st-century life.

While Jason Whitlock was guessing the race of the killer(s) before anyone had yet to be arrested, another columnist was a little more cautious. Leonard Pitts (also black) of the Miami Herald had this to say on Sunday in the Forum section of the Sacramento Bee:

Note that even before four people were arrested Friday, it was being taken for granted by some Internet posters and at least one black columnist (presumably Whitlock -Chanman) that Taylor's assailant or assailants would prove to be black. That is a dangerous and potentially embarrassing assumption. But at the same time, no one was exactly shocked when police released booking photos that proved that assumption to be valid.

Potentially embarrassing for whom Mr. Pitts? For an assuming speculator who turns out to be wrong? Or for the black community when the assumption turns out to once again be correct? It's very sad to say this, but what is "dangerous" Mr. Pitts, is to not base your assumption of being a crime victim on the race of your potential assailant. When approximately 3-6% of our country's population (young black males) are committing about 50% of our country's murders, you tell me what is potentially embarrassing or dangerous about being wary around young black males.

Ooooh, Chanman didn't just go there did he? Before you start pulling out the "R"-word, let's ask none other than Jesse Jackson what he thinks about this subject. In 1993, Jackson stated:

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life, than to walk down the street and hear footsteps . . . then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

Jesse Jackson felt compelled to state the obvious: that young black males commit a vastly disproportionate number of the murders and violent crimes in the United States each year. Jesse Jackson knows it, Jason Whitlock knows it, and even Leonard Pitts - although he is obviously loathe to admit it - knows it as well.

Whitlock ends his column with these final words about the Black KKK, which is wreaking so much havoc on blacks in the United States:

Blame drugs, blame Ronald Reagan, blame George Bush, blame it on the rain or whatever. There's only one group of people who can change the rotten, anti-education, pro-violence culture our kids have adopted. We have to do it.

According to reports, Sean Taylor had difficulty breaking free from the unsavory characters he associated with during his youth.

The "keepin' it real" mantra of hip hop is in direct defiance to evolution. There's always someone ready to tell you you're selling out if you move away from the immature and dangerous activities you used to do, you're selling out if you speak proper English, embrace education, dress like a grown man, do anything mainstream.

The Black KKK is enforcing the same crippling standards as its parent organization. It wants to keep black men in their place — uneducated, outside the mainstream and six feet deep.

In all likelihood, the Black Klan and its mentality buried Sean Taylor, and any black man or boy reading this could be next.

By the way, in case you didn't catch the answer to the mystery of whodunit in the Sean Taylor murder, here are the four suspects, some of whom have already confessed:

I doubt Jason Whitlock is embarrassed about his assumption, but (allegedly) because of these four unnecessary consumers of oxygen, a husband and father is dead.

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I am native of the mountains of northern California; 12-year veteran of the U.S. Army and California National Guard; Secondary School History teacher; Husband; Father of Two; and three-time honoree as Time Magazine's Person of the Year (2003, 2006, 2011).